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So once again it's a long list of tax cuts (business, personal, property owners) and more spending (pre-K, rebuild the airports). Obviously, there's something important we're not being told - are certain spending areas to be cut, or, more likely, how much will the State deficit increase?

And why 10 years tax-free for new businesses? Can I dissolve my small business and start over again to get tax free? Why not just competitive tax rates to get away from this culture of "you'll get it for free"?

This approach feeds the fantasy that we can have more and pay less, all for political expediency (approval/votes).

I'm not even a conservative or Republican but once again fiscal reality is being sacrificed for short-term political gain.

If you were to ask any business or manufacturer which are the top ten factors to be considered when planning to move into any state, taxes are way down on the list. The cost of space, access to transportation - good roads and railroads, educated work force, good schools, cost of housing, cost of electric power, high speed internet would all be considered before the corporate tax rate.

If the State of New York were provide all of the above factors, sure a business man would gadly take a free tax ride on top of it all. If you noticed, Larry Scwartz said he "believed" that low corporate tax would bring businesses to this State. He does not have any facts to back up that assertion.

This all about placating the heavy-hitter contributors to the Cuomo's election campaign.

There was no mention of the front-page article in the NYT on January 16, 2014 (With $613 Million at Stake, an Albany Rivalry Is Said to Escalate) about how AG Eric Schneiderman got a windfall bank settlement which he wanted to use to help those who had suffered foreclosure, but Cuomo wanted to take that money and put it into universal pre-K (which does not address DeBlasio's concern about creating an income stream).

I was disappointed in this segmented. It seemed like it was a platform for Cuomo to tell you how great he is and how much he is doing without an exploration of any of the underlying issues surrounding Cuomo's goals. I love your show because you get at the gray, but you didn't this time.

There was a suggestion that de Blasio did not clean the streets on the Upper East Side because the area did not vote for him in the primaries. The reason for this was NOT because everyone is Republican up here, but because de Blasio is supporting a Bloomberg plan to build a garbage site opposite public housing up near East Harlem. Well, "opposite" is an inadequate word to describe the proximity. You could throw a stone from Stanley Isaacs Houses and have it land in the garbage. So… this is not about taxes (I personally support higher taxes than he proposes), but about poverty and disrespect of public housing residents.

Cuomo should mind his own business. If DeBlasio wants to tax the rich, he should, even if pre-K is paid for by Cuomo's plan. DeBlasio didn't ONLY want pre-K. He also wanted after school help for middle schoolers, as I recall. So let that be paid for by that tiny tax on the rich that they won't even feel. Cuomo is just kowtowing to the rich with this rhetoric of his. Most of us are tired of this deference to people who don't pay as much taxes as they should. Why does he think DeBlasio got elected?

Also, I just don't understand these new definitions of middle class, because by this guys' standards, the middle class is way richer than I am, which shoudl make me 'poor', and yet there are no subsidies or breaks for people of my means. Do I get lumped into the "poor'? Not that I can afford this city anymore, for that matter. Maybe I"ll take my "assets and money" and go elsewhere. They'd fit into a one moving van, and I don't think Cuomo would care.

When it is said the money for pre-K will come from the state, what does that mean more specifically? What has given the state this windfall? Does "from the state" mean from the tax payers? What programs have been cut or cut back for lack or resources?

Your complete ignorance with regard to what drives business is shocking. Would you rather have more jobs or continuation of high unemployment and lackluster economic growth. Trickle up economics does not work. People getting good paying private sector jobs is the way out of this mess. Unemployment checks for all is a band aid not a solution.

Your guest needs to get his facts straight. "Middle-class" "farmers" with estates larger than $1 million DO NOT pay a 16% estate tax on the first million. AFTER the first million current estate tax rates kick in at 5%. If you're going to defend plutocratic regressive taxation, at least know how badly the system is already tilted to the rich and how much more you want to tilt it.

Once again Larry Schwartz and Cuomo argue that if we don't do these things then people will leave NYS. That argument is complete BS. The people leaving the state are not those with incomes over $500,000. The people leaving NYS are hard working middle class people who in a two income family earn between $100-$200K. People like this, and like myself, cannot afford to buy a home, barely can cover childcare, are stretched thin by skyrocketing rents and just want to be able to someday send their kids to college. Cuomo cares less about real middle class an only cares about those on the higher end.

Jobs in Utica! I thying to remember the last time I even just thought about Utica NY never mind 1000 or even one job in Utica NY! No offense meant Uticans, Unicanians [?] but I just don't think about Utica regularly.

Brian's question is key. Forget what you BELIEVE; what do we KNOW about "trickle down" and other likely fallacious supply-side theories? THEY HAVE NOT PANNED OUT. And, upon reflection, they really don't compute. As a nation, we must reconsider.

Frederic Moreau from Rouen
from a ranshakle longere with a pensee with a pie man

As I sit here with a copy of Alexander Von Humboldt's Tableaux de la nature and fantasize about yet another possible escape from this frightful country, this time to Corsica or the Belgian Congo, I discovered this line in La Presse -

"LOL. The king wants to flee to St. Cloud, and you propose attacking the city with sixty thousand troops amid cries of Vive la reforme! as they ransack my stables at the Chateau d'Eau? Merde. To the boulevard des Capucines! Non! To the Tuileries! Non. LOL OMG."

Whereupon I circled my horses, quoted a narrative from some crack pot on Fox News last night, and threw in a few conservative talking points from things I found on that world wide web/internet. YOLO. G.

In relation to Governor Cuomo's recent comment about people who want to own guns and pro-life people, note that today is the March on Washington, 500,000+ people are there, the March starts at 12:00. This should be the top story today, but it's not mentioned. There is terrible killing in Syria and in the Congo, but we have our own cold-blooded slaughter, abortion, which we have not managed to stop. (There is always repentance and forgiveness available.)

Quoted at POLITICO about Cuomo supplying the money for pre-K programs-

“The governor will force the question: Does de Blasio care more about getting four-year-olds ready for school, or about taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers?”

LOL, nah, it’s really about payback revenge on the wealthy … and that’s also why he is not plowing the streets on the Upper East Side. (He wants to hear the cheers from his WFP radical friends of “You go, Boy!”)

(Excerpt from Mike Allen’s “Politicoplaybook” entry entitled “EMPIRE STATE INTRIGUE : Gov. Cuomo, in his budget address at 2 p.m., will announce he's setting aside $1.5 billion over five years for universal pre-K statewide, an amount his aides believe is plenty for Mayor de Blasio to fulfill his signature campaign promise without raising taxes”)

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